ON THE SUBJECT MATTER OF DIALECTIC IN ST. AUGUSTINE’S WORK

Abstract

Augustine’s idea of dialectic combines basic ancient traditions: Aristotelian, Stoic and Neoplatonic ones. But its subject-matter should be viewed not only empirically as a mixture of historical elements, but also properly philosophically, i.e. as dependent on its own concept. In the case of this logical approach every particular historical form of dialectic is a stage in the consciousness of its concept, so the elements of Augustine’s conception constitute a hierarchy. The highest level of this hierarchy is Neoplatonic, and on this stage the concept of dialectic in Augustine’s thought reaches its universally self-conscious, or absolute, form. And yet, although dialectic in Augustine’s work acquires the title of “true truth”, it is not posited as a concrete unity of subject and substance , which is its concept in itself. It will take fourteen centuries of development of thought to acknowledge the processuality of the thinking subject to be a background of the substantial realm of metaphysic, which will take place at the end of modernity in Hegel’s dialectic.

Keywords

• Augustine
• dialectic
• concept
• science
• subject
• self-consciousness
• Neoplatonism